When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character.

He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.

Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.

Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.

Love was like rain: it turned into ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

The best way to die is when your living

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.